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Updated: June 24, 2025
The ring-wall further embraced the Caelian and the whole space of the Esquiline, Viminal, and Quirinal, where a structure likewise but recently brought to light on a great scale on the outside composed of blocks of peperino and protected by a moat in front, on the inside forming a huge earthen rampart sloped towards the city and imposing even at the present day supplied the want of natural means of defence.
It is perhaps well to observe here that the piling up of fallen ruins and the deliberate levellings and gradings, both in ancient and modern times, have greatly altered the appearance of the often-mentioned hills of Rome, especially of the Quirinal, Viminal, and Esquiline.
The slender spire and two little domes of Sta. Maria Maggiore alone indicated the summit of the Esquiline, right in front and far away at the other end of the city; whilst on the heights of the neighbouring Viminal, Pierre only perceived a confused mass of whitish blocks, steeped in light and streaked with fine brown lines recent erections, no doubt, which at that distance suggested an abandoned stone quarry.
Around lay the seven hills on which Rome was originally built. The Capitoline, on which I was standing, the Palatine, Quirinal, Coelius, Aventine, Esquiline, Viminal. Some of them appeared merely green mounds, the remains of the wonderfully strong and ancient walls, and here and there the broken outline of some palace of the great Cæsars.
All these indications, which even in themselves are of great weight, become more significant when we recollect that the accurately known circuit of the Palatine city of the Seven Mounts excluded the Quirinal, and that afterwards in the Servian Rome, while the first three regions corresponded to the former Palatine city, a fourth region was formed out of the Quirinal along with the neighbouring Viminal.
As Pierre reached that new Via Venti Settembre* which climbs the side and summit of the Viminal hill, he was struck by the heavy sumptuousness of the new "palaces," which betokened among the moderns the same taste for the huge that marked the ancient Romans.
To the northeast are the Viminal and Quirinal hills, after the Palatine the most ancient part of the city the seat of the Sabine population. Abounding in fanes and temples, the most splendid of which is the Temple of Quirinus, erected originally to Romulus by Numa, but rebuilt by Augustus, with a double row of columns on each of its sides, seventy-six in number.
From the heights of the Viminal, where the railway terminus stands, the prolonged whistling of engines must have occasionally been carried towards him, suggesting our scientific civilisation, the nations brought nearer together, free humanity marching on towards the future.
However, the street ever ascended and broadened, and on the summit of the Viminal, on the Piazza delle Terme, when he passed the ruins of Diocletian's baths, he could breathe as his lungs listed. No, no, the human day could not finish, it was eternal, and the stages of civilisation would follow and follow without end!
It names as such the Palatine, Aventine, Caelian, Esquiline, Tarpeian, Vatican, and Janiculum, where the Quirinal and Viminal are, evidently as -colles-, omitted, and in their stead two "-montes-" are introduced from the right bank of the Tiber, including even the Vatican which lay outside of the Servian wall.
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